cindy mctee
presentation topics
AT THE HEART OF BEAUTY
In this presentation, Cindy McTee talks about her early musical training, the professional and personal challenges she faces as a composer of contemporary art music, how and why she writes music, and what it feels like to compose.
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COMPOSING AT THE THRESHOLD
Cindy McTee will discuss and play a recording of Einstein’s Dream, a work commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for strings, percussion, and computer music first performed in March of 2005. She will focus on issues of unity – of merging orchestral and computer music sounds to create a single sonority and a new listening experience (to borrow an idea from Paul A. Griffiths) at the threshold between visible and invisible sound.
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SHARPENING YOUR EDGESA six-step process designed to sharpen musical awareness and teach compositional technique.
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GENDER AND MUSIC COMPOSITION:
A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
"We never understand one another wholly, because each of us lives and talks within the borders of a particular perspective. We are stitched to our own ways of knowing, glued to our shadows . . ."
Annie G. Rogers
A Shining AfflictionCindy McTee draws upon her personal and professional experience as a point of departure for discussing issues related to gender and the creative process. She examines the affects of social conditioning on her ability to access and integrate various aspects of self and provides examples of ways in which both the "masculine" and "feminine" have informed her music.
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INSIDE THE COMPOSERS STUDIO
Integrating words, images, and music, University of North Texas Regents Professor, Cindy McTee, offers a composer's perspective on various topics related to recent music and the creative process.
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BIRD BY BIRD
Cindy McTee comments on composing and life inspired by Anne Lamott's national best-selling book, Bird by Bird. Topics include discovery, risk, loneliness, magic, perfectionism, writers block, originality, jealousy, criticism, honesty, and courage.
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. . . AND LET THERE BE SPACE
Cindy McTee writes: I'm not sure God said this, but maybe (s)he meant to. I would like to advocate for composing in circles rather than in straight lines, looking backwards and sideways for inspiration as we move forward, embracing our ethnicity, our gender, our history, studying old music as well as new, slowing down, noticing the environment in which we live, mirroring ourselves and our space as we write.
Illustrated with PowerPoint slides, this presentation focuses on several technical and aesthetic issues encountered while composing her Symphony No. 1: Ballet for Orchestra, among them, making the most out of the least, repetition and visual minimalism, getting physical, eye music, skin, novelty, and repression.
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EINSTEIN'S DREAMS: TIME, MUSIC
AND THE CREATIVE PROCESSInspired by Alan Lightman's 1993 novel, Einstein's Dreams, Cindy McTee provides a composer's perspective on time, recent music, and the creative process. Integrating words, images, and live performance, she demonstrates that musical time is not like ordinary clock time, that women write music too, that computers can "sing," and that the sonorities and materials of musical postmodernism dare to please!
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